The Letter
by darich19
Summary: *SPOILER* Betsy's letter is said to make an appearance in the next episode and I want this is how I picture Rick finding it and what will happen when it does - because don't Betsy&David Rick&Michonne?


**I wanted to write a fanfiction where Rick found Betsy's letter. This is what I imagine it to be like (it's a quick little thing - may add a second, final instalment.)**

* * *

 _'Dear Love,_

 _I know that our time is up. I know that sounds pessimistic. But with you gone and my hands always shaking when I hold a gun, I can't really make it can I? And I hear gun shots right now, so I'm sorry if you can't read my handwriting._  
 _If you make it back, I imagine you'll find this and not know whether to smile or cry...'_

Rick felt like he was trespassing.  
Like his eyes had found the most sensitive secret that could be found on a human being and had chosen to carry on digging. The crumpled piece of paper had been on the floor, splattered with blood of - he was sure - the person who signed the bottom of this letter, 'Betsy'.  
He looked around, at the unhinged door and the struggle that the room told had happened. The upturned pillows and scattered knives and leaking pen and undone dishes. Wincing, he returned back to the letter.  
Something about it enticed him. The 'Dear Love' enticed him. It had such a delicacy to it, as though they had known each other for years. Had they? Rick didn't know, but maybe it would tell him something about what he was missing.  
It felt like he was holding such a rare thing.

 _'... But I'm going to carry on because whatever emotion you show is beautiful._  
 _I remember meeting you and you being as hard as stone, remember? No one had brought you back yet and you always shook your head all of the times my optimism would reach you._  
 _I always believed someone could be loved out from the darkest depths of their soul.'_

He smiled then, the little thump in his heart and the nagging in his mind trying to point him towards a detail he was missing in the moment. Running through his mind was the image of the cage his heart had escaped, the cage that had been empty and filled with cobwebs since Lori left. His heart still hadn't returned, regardless of all the false promises and kisses grasping for understanding and affection that didn't feel like enough - wasn't enough.

 _'You see, you had always told me, about the way you felt like your heart was lying dormant in your chest and I remember how gentle I had to be around you. About how you hated me first but I saw something shine in you that never made me speak a bad word towards you because having you hate me, would mean I couldn't save you in this sick world.'_

Chords were being strung and melodies were ringing through his veins, like sirens, the soft song lured him into a state he hadn't been in for so long. It was a place of alertness. Relaxation.  
Finally, he was able to escape whatever chaos rudely entered without knocking into Alexandria and enter his own mind.  
Reading the paragraph over again, images of Michonne and him back at his home town, in the police station arose.  
He hissed at the scene of him being harsh towards her, the bitterness in his tone finding its way into his throat and making him choke slightly.  
No, he hadn't hated her.

But there was a lack of trust at the beginning that made him hold her at arms length and he hoped, with all their unshared conversations, Michonne had witnessed the times he was apologising.  
Growing tired of the fight brewing in him, the self hate within him clawing up his body to sit and sulk on his brain, he chose to carry on reading, forming a seat for himself on the corner of the counter.

 _'The gunshots seem to be getting closer, so I'll make this short._

 _Don't stop fighting. Don't stop believing you can love. Don't just grasp for love either, wait it out, find yourself again, even in this shitty world. You can find yourself by saving someone else and fighting the good fight._  
 _And when the time is right - you'll know when it is - stop thinking about me. It will stop you from seeing something good that is right in front of you and when this world, this messed up world gives you love for a second time, you take it._

 _Take it._

 _Your Wife, Betsy._

 _P.S. I Lov...'_

There was no more.  
All that followed was blood smeared and the slight leakage of pen on it.  
Rick could almost visualise the scene that had happened and sucked air through his teeth, before setting the letter down and running his hand through his hair.  
He didn't want a haircut. The bush forming on his face called for one, but he didn't want one too.  
How could he show his face?  
Not seeing Michonne since the stupid decision had meant that the guilt hadn't found the right crook to rest it, but now, with the letter mirroring the ways they had saved each other, there was no way of avoiding it.  
There was no way he couldn't tell her about it.  
But what would he follow it up with? The pathetic excuse that things were finally making sense?  
The belief that things were fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle at the worst time in the history of them both?  
Frustrated, he slid off the counter and started to pace back and forth.  
For once, Rick Grimes was lost and no one was able to pep talk him. Not Daryl with his bluntness, there was no Hershal, no Michonne, no Glenn... Cursing he picked up the letter and folded it neatly in his pocket, not wanting to disrupt the beauty of it. In fact, he was afraid that if he messed it up he would be unable to show her that he was sorry in words that were not his own when he finally got home and showed it to her.

'Home.'

It hurt like the name Lori still did in the middle of the night, when the groans of zombies was low enough for you to pretend they didn't exist.  
But home?  
Home had become the image of Michonne bouncing Judith on her leg in front of the big window in the living room and that damn sun hitting her the right way, so her skin radiated a colour so warm he wanted to wrap himself in it.  
Home... Well home was the soft gargle of Judith's laughter and the moodiness of Carl in his teenage years being scrubbed away by Michonne's playful manner.  
Chuckling, he wiped his hand over his mouth and let his blue eyes gaze out of the window of Betsy's and her husband's - David? - house.  
All you could see what destruction.  
And in the destruction, the warm glow that pressed itself against the lining of his stomach travelled up to his heart and whispered her name.  
A part of him was sure that if he hadn't been so in tune with himself in the moment, he would have missed it. The feeling had been there before, but he could tell now that because of his lack of intuition, he had not heard it every time it must have whispered her name.  
Home.  
Her.  
Home.  
Carl.  
Home.  
Judith.  
Home.  
Them. Family. A unit.

And finally, his heart returned gently back into its cage, closing the door behind it and beating with a new urgency that filled every blood vessel with the feeling of being alive.


End file.
